Assassin's Creed: Across Timelines
by BlackAndWhite9999
Summary: Two women. One the first Assassin in a hundred years, the other the last Assassin left after the Purge. One plunging headfirst into the Assassin lifestyle, one struggling to escape it. Two women whose fates will intertwine, though they will never meet. Their fates intersect across timelines. Brief OCxDesmond.
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

** CHAPTER 1 - PROLOGUE**

**October 19th****, 2109, 12:14 AM**

Esmeralda lay back on the scratchy, worn cotton padding of the Animus. This thing was outdated. Very outdated. It's a miracle the piece of junk could even start, but that's Esmeralda for you, always finding a way. It wasn't too hard, actually. Abstergo-Yutani was always making improvements to the Animus software, but even over a hundred years, their core programming remained similar enough that Esmeralda was able to apply their modern Animus tech to this antique. _If it ain't broke_, she supposed.

She fidgeted and squirmed, trying to find a comfortable way to lie down. The machine creaked under her, raising the fear that the Animus could actually break under her meager weight. _Well, that's something I'll have to worry about later, _she resolved, having finally gotten comfortable. She lay her head back in the machine's crescent-shaped head harness. Then she reached over to her right and typed in a few commands on her HoloTablet.

A sultry female monotone began to speak inside her brain:

_Avatar Program initiate in Three. Two. One. Initiate Avatar Program. _

Esmeralda's surroundings went black. And then everything was bright. And she could feel nothing but the accelerated pace of her own heartbeat.

The blinding light seemed to come from all sides, as if she were standing inside a sun. She held her hands up to shield her eyes, but even her own hands were blotted by its intensity. _I'm gonna go blind if I stay in here any longer, _she thought. _I have to cancel the program. _But before she could verbally make the command, her thoughts were interrupted by the deep, seductive voice of an Italian man.

"Going so soon, _figlia_ _mia_?" the voice came from directly ahead, some ten meters away. The brightness of the room seemed to dissipate, replaced by what appeared to be floating mirrors and tiles, and lines of code streaking across space with wild abandon. All of this was background, of course, to the resplendent presence that stood before her. Donning robes of immaculate white and burning crimson, sporting a mature goatee, and a glare that could melt the hearts of all who met his eye, the man approached her and tenderly grasped her hand in his palm. He graced her skin with a gentle kiss, and politely bowed.

"Our correspondence has only just begun," he finished.

"You're not real," Esmeralda said, after an uncomfortable pause.

"Of course not. If I were, do you think I would live in a place as _rivoltante _as this?"

"So the Avatar Program was successful?"

"I am a recreation of your ancestor," the man responded, in a mechanical voice devoid of accent. "A compilation of knowledge, experiences, and abilities based on the memories explored by your great-great grandfather, Desmond Miles."

Esmeralda's stomach turned at the sound of his name.

"If we're gonna get along, you're gonna have to stop mentioning him." Esmeralda demanded.

"That is going to be _difficile,_"the man responded, back to his normal voice, "seeing as he is the point around which everything pivots. Has pivoted. Will pivot. Whatever goal you seek, whatever the Brotherhood aspires to accomplish, it all will surely come back to Desmond Miles."

"The Brotherhood doesn't seek anything," Esmeralda spat back. "The Brotherhood doesn't exist anymore. They haven't for about a hundred years."

"And yet, _figlia mia," _Ezio Auditore da Firenze smirked, "here you are."

**October 19th****, 2109, 12:19 AM**

Esmeralda's trial run with the Animus' Avatar Program had proven successful. She was now certain that even with her hundred-year-old model of the Animus, she would be able to not only revisit the memories of her ancestors, but use those memories to compile a digital projection of that ancestor with which she could verbally and physically interact. She was satisfied. Very satisfied.

"Deconstruct projection." Esmeralda called out into space. Before her, Ezio bowed.

"_Arrivederci_," and he waved goodbye as his image scattered into millions of tiny fragments, which then themselves scattered, floating around in a large cloud of data blocks, waiting to be reconstructed into something else.

"Construct projection: Desmond Miles."

The scattered fragments of data swarmed, crashing into one another, building together until it finally formed a skinny, tan-skinned, short-haired man wearing a white sweatshirt and a permanent expression of fear. No, not fear. Apology.

Esmeralda didn't accept.

Instead, she attacked him, repeatedly punching the avatar of Desmond Miles across his face, until the program began to animate blood dripping from his mouth.

**August 29****th****, 2012, 11:47 AM**

Fatimah awoke to the endearing sound of light snoring beside her. She rolled over, looking at the sculpted, gorgeous face of the man she'd gone home with the night before. Strong cheekbones, thin nose, even the scar on the right side of his lip was cute. She reached over and started caressing his chest, feeling his heartbeat. Calm and slow. So peaceful. She watched him lovingly as he roused to wakefulness, his brown eyes peeling open and meandering around the room before landing on her. They then closed again, and his scarred lip curled into a smile.

"That's a little creepy, you know, watching people while they sleep," Desmond Miles said softly.

Fatimah's grin only grew wider. "It's also rude to snore, but that doesn't seem to stop you," she shot back.

"No one's ever complained before," Desmond said, sitting up. He put his strong, calloused hand on Fatimah's bare stomach and slowly rubbed it. She found the roughness of his hand soothing. "You hungry?"

"No," she responded while yawning, "just chilly."

"Then put some clothes on," Desmond smiled.

"And deprive you of the show? Fat chance," she responded. Desmond laughed and dove back down on top of her, kissing her neck and tickling her sides. She laughed and wrestled him off, managing to subdue him and climb on top with ease. Her smooth calves tickled against his hairy thighs, her soft hands fondling his strong chest. He exhaled softly, and she smiled. In one motion, she raised herself up and then slowly brought herself down, merging her body with his. She brought down her lips to his, and they kissed as their bodies moved as one. He tugged at her hair and she clawed at his chest. He flipped her over onto her back, tenderly biting her neck. She tightened her grip on his back, holding on as the ecstasy pulsated throughout her entire body, overcoming her.

The sunlight peeked in from behind the crimson curtains, and yet they were still creatures of the night.

**August 29****th****, 2012, 12:36 PM**

Desmond had left for the store without cuddling. Fatimah thought that was rather rude of him, but she did not protest. It gave her time to think. She put on her panties and shirt, and lumbered over to the kitchen. Her legs were still weak. She opened the fridge and found a very scant variety of options drink-wise. She understood that he was a bartender, but drinking beer at 12:30 in the afternoon on an empty stomach was not a very attractive thought. Eventually she decided on a glass of tap water. She ran the tap into her glass and took a drink.

Still tasted like metal pipes, but it was a lot better than the barely-clean shit they drank at the Farm.

Desmond would be drinking it again very soon.


	2. Chapter 2: Complex

AN: Hey guys, this chapter is much longer, and it's very Fatimah-heavy. The next one will be so as well, but the one after that will be very Esmeralda-heavy. I'm still exploring these characters and working out how the two parallel stories will complement one another. Please leave me a review and follow the story if you're enjoying it! Thank you so much!

...

**CHAPTER 2 – COMPLEX**

**October 19****th****, 2109, 12:30 AM**

No time for sleep. There was absolutely, absolutely no time for sleep. There was simply too much to do. Now that Esmeralda had gotten the Animus 3.0 working, she had the world at her fingertips, literally. A quick study of her family lineage a month ago showed that she had ancestors spanning the entire globe, from New York to Dubai to Istanbul to Florence to Syria. Months' worth of culture and knowledge to absorb, and so many Assassins with whom to train through the Avatar program.

**September 21****st****, 2109, 7:00 PM**

Obtaining the Animus 3.0 would not be easy. It would, in fact, likely be the single riskiest thing Esmeralda would do all her life, if she survived the trip. She had no training, no prior experience, and no team to fall back on for support. It was only herself and her instinct, on which she was not used to relying.

Surely, though, her self-designed hidden blade would come in handy.

The night before, she had used the same online lineage software she'd used to track down her own family history to find the descendants of one Rebecca Crane, a former Assassin who'd consorted with Desmond Miles, and the inventor of the Animus 3.0, the only Animus in the world that was not under Abstergo-Yutani control. In other words, once Esmeralda got it, the Templars wouldn't be able to track her when she used it.

Esmeralda wasn't surprised to discover that Rebecca Crane had no children. She wouldn't have had much time to start and raise a family before the Second Purge. However, she did have a sister, and therefore nieces and nephews, which then became great-nieces and great-nephews, and a hundred years later, it turned out her sister's descendants were living in a residential block in Massachusetts.

MA-325 was a 6-square-mile residential block near Northampton. According to history, it used to be a lush, forested region before Abstergo-Yutani leveled it and built a complex of housing projects for the region's underprivileged and homeless. There were thousands of these complexes all across the United States. The foundation of the residential blocks put so much money in the pockets of Abstergo-Yutani and gave their leaders so much political stake that the Templars could essentially pick and choose who held political office, or at least much more easily than in the past (recent photos of the oval office shows the scarlet Mark of Cain on President Borland's lapel, which a few people noticed). The company has made a lot of smart moves over the years, but the residential blocks were absolutely the Templars' ace.

In an ideal world, the benefits the residential blocks yielded for the Templar higher-ups would trickle down to those forced to live there. But there was nothing ideal about these complexes. The houses were small and cramped, poorly insulated for the winter, and lacking air conditioning for the summer. There was no agriculture as far as the eye could see, so clean oxygen was not in large supply. Medication was expensive. Birth control was barely attainable, so the population usually hit its overflow point within twenty years. But naturally, media coverage of the residential blocks was so scarce that no one ever paid enough attention to do anything about it, apart from independent journalists and archivists to whom no one ever really listened anyway. And so it continues, and nothing ever changes.

Esmeralda knows it all too well. After all, she grew up in NY-242.

_No. Don't think about it. Stop it_. She forced herself to switch to a different thought train. She refused to revisit that chapter of her life. She had to stay anchored in the present. She returned her mind to the matter at hand.

There was no guarantee that the Crane family residing in MA-325 would actually have the Animus 3.0. There was no record of where Rebecca left the Animus at all, or whether or not she was close enough with her family to trust them with such an important item. But Esmeralda had to hope. She didn't have any other leads.

Esmeralda held her dark grey hooded cloak tightly against her as she stood outside in the chilling rain, pounding on the ticket office window. With a flutter, the blinds flew up and a dowdy, wrinkled old woman croaked into the microphone.

"What do you want, Darth?"

"I want a ticket to MA-325," Esmeralda said, laying her hundred dollars in cash in the pass-through slot.

The woman didn't even look at the money before spitting "Sold out. Try again tomorrow." and dropping the blinds.

Esmeralda blinked, confused, before becoming insulted. She knocked again. "Hey!"

As a response, the light inside the office turned off. The crone within neglected to turn off her music.

Rather than panicking, Esmeralda decided to weigh her options. She could wait until tomorrow, but that would be a full twenty-four hours in which anything could change. Abstergo-Yutani could discover her and arrest her. The Crane family might get rid of the Animus for whatever reason. She could try bribing the bus driver, but depending on how much the driver valued fidelity, he could report her to the bus agency and she would be blacklisted, and then how would she ever get to Massachusetts? She considered renting a car to drive, but despite being perfectly capable of driving, she had no license, and even if she did, she'd need to use her photo ID to sign out the rental car and buy the insurance. Her name and picture would be in two separate databases. If anyone discovered where she was going and what she was doing, they'd be able to find her with little effort. At least bus tickets bought in cash remained anonymous.

It was settled then. She would have to wait another day. It was the safest way. Esmeralda heaved a sigh of relief, actually. Another twenty-four hours might be useful in going over her plan of attack.

"Excuse me, miss?" she heard a voice from behind her. She turned around to look. The voice belonged to a tall boy with olive skin and tousled brown hair. "Um, my associate dipped on me last minute. If you want a ticket, I could use the company."

Well, wasn't this convenient. A bit too convenient, from where Esmeralda stood. She studied the boy. He had a thin, handsome face, with a long nose and some stubble. He wore a black, skinny suit, with a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. He reached into his pocket and produced two solid plastic bus tickets, both with blinking red lights. He stretched one out to Esmeralda. She didn't budge.

"Who are you?"

"Jeremy," he responded, "Jeremy Farragut". He retracted the ticket and instead held out his hand to shake. She did, reluctantly. She didn't speak, however. "And...what's yours?"

Instead of responding, Esmeralda took his spare ticket. "Thanks."

"No problem, miss." Jeremy responded, a bit off-put by her decision not to answer. "Can I ask why you chose cloak instead of umbrella?"

"Didn't have one," she said.

Behind them, the chrome, cylindrical bus hissed as it lowered itself down to the curb, air escaping the pockets in the wheelwells that keep it at its usual monstrous height. The door slid open, and the bus driver signaled Esmeralda to climb aboard. She nodded and climbed the stairs onto the bus, handing her ticket to the bus driver. He absentmindedly hovered it over a scanner on his dashboard, and the small blinking red light turned a solid green. He handed the ticket back to her, not even looking at her face. She felt a certain satisfaction at that, and hoped that this trend of no one caring enough to pay attention to her would continue.

She inspected her ticket to find her designated seat. _Z4_. That meant the very back of the bus, window seat. Perfect. She traveled to the rear of the vehicle and slid in all the way. She took a seat and started unbuttoning her cloak, when a voice interrupted her a second time.

"You know, if we're gonna be sitting next to each other, we might as well get to know one another," said Jeremy, as he slid in beside her, unbuttoning his jacket and sitting down. "You never did tell me your name."

"What did you mean by 'associate'?" Esmeralda asked, looking out the window. She elected to keep her cloak on.

"A co-worker of mine," Jeremy answered after a frustrated sigh. "We're software technicians. Although this job is a little out of the ordinary for us. She called me this morning to say she quit her job, so I'm on my own."

"Well, good luck finding a computer in a residential block," Esmeralda said.

"That's a very kind sentiment, thank you," Jeremy laughed. "But, I'm not a computer software designer. Well, not strictly. Most of my work has to do with DNA sequencing, particularly with Animus programs."

Esmeralda's head whipped around, her hood nearly falling off in the process. Her eyes went wide, unblinking. "What did you say?"

Jeremy seemed thrown by her sudden concern. "Animus programs. I'm a developer for the Animi training program. You know what I'm talking about, right?"

"What you're saying is that you work for..."

"Yeah, that's right." Jeremy nodded. "I work for Abstergo-Yutani."

**August 29****th****, 2012, 1:14 AM**

Fatimah scrolled through her phone's contacts and hovered over William Miles' name. She really did not want to have to hear his rude, belittling voice again. Hell, she was enjoying her present mission because it was giving her a few days away from his judgmental glare. But she had to confer with her superior. Especially since the mission had gotten so...complex.

Yes, complex was the word for it.

The Assassins had tracked Desmond to New York, but beyond that, they were clueless. Knowing they had a skilled tracker in their midst in the form of young apprentice Fatimah Samara, she was tasked with pinpointing Desmond Miles and bringing him back to the Farm. If she did that, she'd no longer be an apprentice. She'd been one for too long, anyway. Once she returned Desmond to dear old dad, she would be able to lead her own squad, attend meetings, and confer with other team leaders to write up assassination plans and collect contracts. And that was wonderful, yes, absolutely wonderful, it was everything she'd ever dreamed of...but it wasn't what she wanted. The idea of it didn't excite her. It excited her when she trained in Dubai. But not anymore.

Either way, Fatimah was at risk of failing her mission due to emotional compromise. She assumed that chatting up Desmond at Bad Weather and earning his trust would open a path for her to simply talk him into returning. But it got complex. Instead, she became emotionally attached to him very, _very _quickly, and slept with him. She developed affection for him, and she was certain that he had developed affection for her the same way. It made sense to her. After all, they'd spent every minute of that night together. They had been at the bar talking for hours. When they were at his apartment, whatever time they didn't spend fucking, they spent talking. They weren't just having sex, they were enjoying each other's company, weren't they? They weren't just two animals in bed, they were two people sharing a connection, weren't they?

However, just forty-five minutes earlier, Desmond had come back from the store, saw her in his kitchen, and said in the most dismissive voice possible, "What, you're still here?"

Now, all she had was a damaged ego and her target's location. At least she could relay _one_ of those to the boss. She took one more gander up at Desmond's apartment window. She couldn't see him, but she could see the flash of his television screen against the walls. Fatimah couldn't remember the last time she had watched television. They didn't have those at the Farm, except for in William's office, only to watch the news.

She pressed her thumb against her phone screen and put the phone against her ear. It rang three times before the familiar voice answered.

"What news?" William Miles growled.

"I've located Desmond Miles," she responded. "He's staying in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan."

"Good. Bring him home."

"I'm afraid I can't do that on my own, sir," she responded.

"Care to run that by me again?"

"I was hoping to befriend the target so that I could avoid using force-"

"Oh god. Just stop. Stop right there, Fatimah," he barked. Fatimah knew this command all too well. Whenever he wanted to yell at her, he would tell her to "stop right there!" What a domineering asshole. But like a good apprentice, she pursed her lips and listened. "Are you telling me you tried to establish an emotional connection in a limited window of time? Do you realize that operations involving emotional connections are usually given weeks, even months, if need to be, to run their course? This mission was supposed to last no longer than a few days. You don't have time for an emotional connection. Now are you telling me that you won't be able to use force to bring him back?"

"No, sir," she said through gritted teeth, while struggling not to squeeze the phone to pieces in her hand, "only that the emotional connection was insubstantial for the desired goal."

"Well, any moron could have predicted that," he scoffed. "Apprehend the target, tie him up, throw him in the trunk, and bring him home. I want your next progress report within seventy-two hours, and I had better hear some progress."

Click. Conversation over. Fatimah's blood was boiling, her hand shaking. First she gets snubbed by Miles the younger, then gets chewed out by Miles the elder? It was hardly past one o'clock and she had already just about had it with Miles men. Rather than make a scene or staging any show of aggression that would compromise her cover, she simply put her phone in her pocket, donned her hood, and continued on down the street. She didn't bother looking up at Desmond's window again.

William Miles. Some leader he was. At least his ego hadn't gotten so big that he'd decided to declare himself Mentor. He wouldn't be the kind of Mentor that Fatimah would have chosen to swear by. Not like the Mentor in Dubai.

At the mere thought of the Mentor, she felt the wind die down and the air become warm again. His memory permeated her heart and illuminated her soul, as it did for all who ever were lucky enough to meet him. She had only seen him once in person, in the Dubai headquarters, speaking with her instructor Mahmoud. For one second, he turned and looked her deep in her eyes, and smiled. The light radiated from his white suit, as if the sun was at his disposal, rising when he arrived and setting when he departed. He was not just a man, nor was he just a Mentor. He was a presence, seemingly infinite, neither beginning nor ending.

And then Daniel Cross happened. And the Mentor ended.

So did everyone else.

The memories of what transpired after were painful. She prefers not to dwell on them when awake, but she has little choice at night when consciousness gives way to dreams. Seeing the bodies of all her friends, teachers, brothers and sisters still haunts her nightmares. She, a fourteen-year-old girl at the time, training to befriend death, was in that moment surrounded by it on all sides, and it spawned such remarkable fear in her. She was saved by Mahmoud, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the neck, who guided her out of the headquarters and into the back of a van with four other students her age.

He shut the door. Then gunshots panged against the truck doors, and Fatimah heard Mahmoud's body slide down against the door and plop on the ground. The truck sped away.

Thirteen hours later, she was in Baghdad International Airport, boarding a plane to the United States. When she got off in New York, she and the other Assassins moved from hotel to hotel, never staying in one city for more than a few days. They would work odd jobs here and there, making enough money to survive, but never enough to live. They couldn't enjoy worldly pleasantries or indulge in anything fun or ostentatious, lest they risk blowing their own cover.

All the precautions in the world didn't matter. Within three years, all of her friends were gone. Picked off one by one by Abstergo agents. No matter what city or town they went to, they would never be safe, for the Templars always had their claws sunk deep into the city's infrastructure. And they had eyes everywhere. But there was one Assassin camp so isolated, so fortified, she knew the Templars would never be able to locate or infiltrate it. One that the Templars likely had never even known about. She knew if she could find it, she would be safe. And she had no other options than to seek it out.

So she started on her journey. She bought camping materials, packed her bags, and lived in the woods for years. She taught herself how to hunt, how to cook over a campfire, and how to make shelter. It was difficult at first, but she found a way. Most importantly, she bought a compass. She moved west for five months until she reached the Black Hills of South Dakota.

By the time she reached the Farm in June of 2003, Desmond Miles had already been gone for three months.

**August 30****th****, 2012, 12:01 PM**

Donning a leather jacket and black baseball cap, not wearing any makeup and keeping her hair tied down, Fatimah sat in the back of the Bad Weather bar. She spoke to no one. She drank nothing. Instead she merely sat and listened. And waited.

Desmond was bartending that night. He was chatting up another woman at the bar, a red-haired woman, likely Irish, and several years younger than Fatimah. Honestly, Fatimah was too disgusted with him to be jealous of her. The young lady could sleep with him if she wanted. Not Fatimah's problem. From here on in, she was focused on her quarry, and focused on figuring out how she was going to acquire him.

Fatimah had been trained since she was twelve years old how to hone her senses and attune them to her objective. In this case, she was taking control over her sense of hearing. A bar is a very noisy place, full of loud drunks, clinging glasses, and offensive music, but with the right amount of concentration, Fatimah could make out a conversation clearly enough to get the gist of what was being discussed.

She focused intently on the conversation Desmond was having with the girl. If he really was hitting on her, at some point he would attempt to make plans with her. And that might give Fatimah some idea of where and when he'll be within the next few days.

She listened...

"...really pretty hair...is it natural?"

"...yeah...color it sometimes..."

"...gotta be expensive..."

"...me about it...addicted to it..."

Well. It was all garbage so far. Fatimah really wanted to get up and leave. This show was sickening in its familiarity. Desmond hits it off with this young woman, they talk for hours while he's _supposed _to be bartending, and then they go home and...yeah, pretty sickening. It was fun to think about two nights ago, when Fatimah was in the redhead's place and thought she had discovered something special. Now that she knew that she was only an event in a repeating pattern, the whole situation lost its appeal pretty quickly.

"...whole cabinets of dye at home..."

"...maybe I could see it sometime..."

"...tomorrow night?"

Fatimah's attention drew back onto the conversation. They were making plans. She couldn't afford to miss a word of dialogue. She watched Desmond's lips intently, and listened as hard as possible, tuning out all the background noise of the bar, calibrating her senses for the specific timbre of Desmond's voice.

"Yeah, I'm off tomorrow night," Fatimah made out from what Desmond said. "Maybe I can take you out for a drink."

"I would like that a lot," the redhead girl said in response. "I'll meet you here tomorrow night at 8:00?"

"Okay then," Desmond smiled, "it's a date."

Fatimah stood up and left, pushing through the crowd of drunk bargoers and making for the door. She stepped outside into the cold, chilly air, the fog turning the neon city lights into an obscure, abstract watercolor of dull, muted hues. Fatimah took out her phone and dialed William Miles. Four rings this time.

"Now what? This had better be good news." William sounded as if he hadn't changed moods since the day before.

"I've been tailing Desmond since we spoke yesterday," Fatimah began. "I know where he'll be tomorrow night. I intend to kidnap him. But I need a support team to help me transport him. I have no vehicle. I can't do this on my own."

William took a few seconds to think. Finally, the silence was broken by his exasperated sigh. "Very well. I'm sending you Rodolpho and Damian. They're all I can spare. Two agents should be enough, yes?"

"Yes," Fatimah said, relieved that William was finally listening to her. "Thank you, sir."

"There's more," William continued. "Rodolpho outranks you technically, but this has been your operation from the start. Therefore, I'm placing you in command of this squad. Do you understand the responsibility that comes with this?"

Fatimah was speechless for a minute. Was this William Miles talking? This had to be some kind of trick. William Miles barely trusted her to go on a solo mission, and now he's trusting her with a team?

"Fatimah, are you there?"

"Yes sir," she responded. "I understand and accept, sir."

"Good. I'm dispatching them immediately and putting them on a last-minute flight. Are there any first orders you'd like me to relay?"

"Yes, sir," Fatimah replied. "Tell them to meet me on the roof of the Eaglepoint Hotel at 7:30 PM tomorrow."

**August 31****st****, 2012, 7:20 PM**

Fatimah slipped on her sweat-absorbent top over her sports bra, and slid on her black yoga pants. She parted her feet about a meter in width, and bent forward, touching the floor. Then she spread her arms out, touching her toes. She counted down from twelve. Then she sat up and placed all her weight on her right leg, sitting down on her right foot and stretching out her left leg. Counted down from twelve. She switched legs. Counted down from twelve. She stood up, placed her arm across her chest and held it in place with the other arm. Twelve. Then switched. Twelve.

Finally, she cracked all her knuckles and stretched out her fingers. Feeling nimble, warmed up, and ready, she grabbed her gloves. She was quite fond of these gloves; they had rubber grips on the palm side, but small metal plates on the knuckle side. Part climbing gear, part cestus. Very nice.

Next was the hidden blade. Supposedly such weapons were mostly ceremonial these days, and generally out of commission for Assassins at large. It looked like that memo never reached William Miles. She went through collective months of training and research for this thing. It was supposedly as important to an Assassin's identity as the Creed itself. William once joked, "it doesn't mean anything to 'stay your blade' if there's no blade to stay". He chortled. Fatimah didn't. It wasn't very funny.

She wrapped the hidden blade around her right wrist. Around her left wrist, she wrapped a watch that doubled as a belt of small throwing knives. Finally, against her thigh, she buckled a holster, and in it, placed her 9mm pistol. As she loaded a suppressor into its slot on her holster, she couldn't shake the feeling that the pistol made all her other weaponry unnecessary.

She tied her white and red sneakers, and zipped up her white and red sweater. She pinned her wild, curly black hair down with bobby pins, and then tied the rest back. She put up her hood, the triangle adornment at the front just long enough to block the light from above, draping her eyes in shadow.

She reached into her black backpack and produced a small spray can of knockout gas. _This will come in handy, should all else fail. _She placed it in her zipperable sweater pocket.

She opened the window and removed the insect screen. She climbed onto the windowsill, and looked around outside. Ten stories down. Six stories to the roof. The building to the immediate right of this one was only ten stories tall, on level with her current position. _I can move horizontally across this one until I reach the building adjacent, _she planned, _and then use that roof to get a running start onto the top of this one. Six minutes' work. _

Her body betrayed her thoughts, however. Her heart was pounding out of her chest and she was already sweating. In the Farm they had specially constructed ledges on which to practice climbing techniques. Everything was measured and solid and maintained. These buildings...real buildings...well, anything could happen. What if the ledges crumbled under her weight? What if she underestimated a jump? What if she missed a ledge and fell to-

No. She chose not to think about it. Thinking doesn't get anything done. Action does. Fatimah gripped the windowsill on the inside behind her, and jumped forward. Her body spun around, hanging down from the window ledge, her hands still gripping the windowsill tight, unbudging. _Shit, these gloves are amazing. _She looked down. Ten stories below, the pedestrians just kept on walking. No one was bothering to look up at the woman who could potentially fall to her death.

Fatimah looked to the building adjacent, which was now on her left, since she'd turned around. It was about five windows away. The windows were spaced about four feet apart. Each window was sunken into the wall's outside about six inches deep, likely a design choice by an architect who clearly had a love affair with art-deco. Fatimah muttered a thank-you to the architect. The window design would make the lateral traversal much simpler. But she knew that in the end, it would all came down to her finger strength. Would she be able to maintain grip on the windowsill?

_I'll never know unless I try, _she concluded. _Here goes. _She took a deep breath in through her nose, out through her mouth, and...

...she pushed off with her legs from the right, sending her body five feet to the left. At the exact right moment—_Urgh!_—she grabbed the window ledge and planted her feet. A short laugh escaped her. She did it! She jumped across a building without falling to a bloody, sticky death! _Well that wasn't so hard. One window down, four to go._

She jumped. And jumped. And jumped again. The wind was strong, but not enough to impede her trajectory. All it did was blow her hood off. On the fourth window, a little boy was sitting at the windowsill, looking outside. Inside, his parents were watching television, not paying attention to what he was doing. His eyes grew wide and his mouth hung open at the sight of a woman crouching on his windowsill. Fatimah panicked. _Don't tell your parents, don't tell your parents, don't tell your parents..._

Fatimah looked him in the eye and put her finger on her lips. He closed his mouth and nodded vigorously. Then she jumped once more.

She grabbed the ledge of the adjacent building's roof and pulled herself up. She looked up at the Eaglepoint hotel. _Six more stories to the top. _She checked her watch. 7:24. _Six minutes to rendezvous. Better get up there. _Fatimah put her hood back stepped back, crouched down into a running start position, and sprinted toward the hotel. She stepped on the bottom of the wall and pushed up from her feet, scaling a full story in one motion. She pulled herself up to the next windowsill with her arms and then pushed off with her legs, jumping up to the next story. And again. And again. _Shit, was I nervous before? This is awesome! _She hadn't even broken a sweat yet.

Finally, she reached the top. She pulled herself up onto the roof, where Rodolpho and Damian were just arriving at the same time. They were both dressed identically to one another and similarly to her, although they were wearing black track pants. Rodolpho was a tall, Italian man with facial stubble and greasy hair that always looked gelled even when it wasn't. Damian was shorter, thinner, and younger, with dirty-blonde hair and blue eyes. She'd gotten along with Damian very well in the past – in fact, they had most of their training together. Recently, Rodolpho ran a hidden blade training seminar they both took part in. It went well, if you look past the fact that Rodolpho was not a particularly adept instructor. _I guess it's best he's not leading the squad, then, _Fatimah thought.

"Evening, gentlemen," she said as she approached them. They all converged towards the center of the building. "Have a good flight?"

"Why are we meeting up here?" Rodolpho asked, his second-generation Italian accent punctuating key syllables. "Couldn't you have just called?"

"No. I want to give these orders in person to ensure there are no mistakes." Fatimah was trying on authority for size, trying to emulate how Mahmoud or even William sounded when giving orders or laying down the law. Listening to herself, it sounded a bit forced, but neither Rodolpho nor Damian seemed to pick up on it.

"Copy that," Damian nodded, his mousey voice sounding so tiny next to Rodolpho's. "What's the plan, boss?"

Fatimah took a second to run through all the intel in her head. She knew where Desmond was. She knew when he'd be there. And she knew who he'd be with and what they'd be doing. That's all she needed.

"Our target is Desmond Miles," she began. "He's an ex-Assassin and the son of our leader. Nine years ago he left the Farm."

"Yeah, we know." Rodolpho said. "We grew up with the guy."

Fatimah forgot that she was the only one there who hadn't been born and raised at the Farm, and the only one who had known Desmond during his adulthood.

"Good, so you have an idea what he'll look like. The scar on his lip is telltale. Tonight at 8:00 he'll be meeting a redheaded woman at the Bad Weather bar a few blocks away. At some point during the night, they're going to leave and head for her apartment. I followed her home last night. She lives a short walk away from the bar. That reduces our operation to two locations – Bad Weather, and her apartment."

"Okay, sure," Damian said, "but as long as he's with the Weasley chick, we won't be able to get at him."

"Which is why we need to wait until he's alone," Fatimah continued, "and if that doesn't happen, we need to make it happen however we can. Do we have a vehicle?"

"Black corolla, parked just downstairs."

Perfect. Here's the game plan. Damian, you'll will wait in the car until you receive further orders. I will wait on a roof nearby Bad Weather. Rodolpho, we'll put you inside to keep an eye on him. I want updates on all of his movements. If he goes to the bathroom, we run in and nab him with his pants down. If he leaves with redhead, we wait until he gets to her place. We can't operate in the street or else we risk being seen. Once they're home, we'll alert Damian to bring the car around. Rodolpho, you and I sneak in, gas them both, and throw Desmond in the car as soon as it arrives. Red will wake up tomorrow morning thinking he left to run errands and she'll go home. She won't even remember us."

"Yeah, but, what if they're already makin' it in the sack when you guys get in there?" Damian asked, snickering.

Fatimah tried to hide her retches as her stomach turned over. "We'll do them a courtesy and leave the lights off. Everyone clear?"

Rodolpho and Damian stood at attention, putting their feet together and placing their right fist over their heart. They gave a slight bow with their heads. _They're bowing to me, _Fatimah mused. _Swearing their loyalty to me. _Her heart went aflutter. Maybe the power to command isn't only what she dreamt of. Maybe it is what she wanted.

"Good. Bad Weather is three blocks south of our position. Let's move!" Fatimah concluded.

Like a team of perfectly coordinated falcons preparing to soar, the three Assassins sprinted for the southern ledge of the Eaglepoint Hotel. They kicked off.

And they jumped.


End file.
